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Health Checkups: Not Just a 'Routine Event' but a Process of Protecting Quality of Life
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For most people, health checkups are still close to 'annual events received at designated times.'
When employed, they receive company-designated checkups, and after retirement, they visit hospitals at their family's recommendation, but many don't deeply consider which tests they actually need.
However, experts who have been in charge of health checkups in medical settings for a long time say that health disparities widen more significantly from lifestyle habits and preventive care than from simple economic conditions. Even within the same age group, health status varies greatly depending on regular maintenance, and this becomes a key factor determining quality of life in old age.
The purpose of health checkups is not simply to 'find' diseases.
It's a test that checks current health status, identifies potential future risk factors in advance, and establishes directions for prevention and management. For this reason, recent medical guidelines emphasize the need for comprehensive evaluation that considers not only individual diseases but also the patient's overall condition, lifestyle, and activity level, rather than simple one-time screening.
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The Need for Repeated Checkups and Long-term Observation
Not everyone needs repeated screening. In effective screening, there are cases where screening is not repeated for a certain period depending on the individual's overall condition, or maintenance management is sufficient without additional testing even if abnormalities are found.
For this reason, in medical settings, the perspective has changed from merely detecting abnormalities through checkups to viewing them as an evolving process.
This means that as conditions change, the environment changes, and health status varies, continuous observation is needed along with changes.
For example, when inspecting the same area at a young age with low risk, observing in middle age as risk increases, and carefully examining in later years when changes accelerate, shifting inspection targets to cardiovascular, cognitive function, etc., can be an alternative. This approach helps avoid unnecessary duplicate examinations while understanding the long-term health management flow.
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'Function-Centered' Health Management Becoming Important in an Aging Society
For the elderly, maintaining current physical and cognitive function is more important than simply having or not having diseases.
Especially in situations where memory decline or cognitive function changes are concerning, functional assessment and lifestyle management have core meaning rather than simple test results.
Recently, a prevention-centered management approach that examines muscle mass, bone density, brain function, etc. together, evaluates the possibility of maintaining function in the future, and checks overall daily life including exercise, eating habits, sleep, and stress management is receiving attention. This represents a shift in awareness that diseases like dementia should not be treated as 'treatment targets' but rather delayed as much as possible and establishing empathy treatment as four core values, the 'Global Checkup Center' operates a customized checkup method that adjusts checkup items by comprehensively considering individual age, health history, and lifestyle habits.
Rather than repeating the same tests every year, the characteristic is to check physical functions step by step from a mid-to-long-term perspective and provide sufficient explanation of checkup results together with future management directions. This can be said to be an attempt to continue health checkups not as one-time tests but as a continuous health management process.
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